IN ASIA, AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA, A BANNER FOR REVOLUTION; Wobbling of the Party Line: Safdar Hashmi, Theater Director, India

Published: January 24, 1989

Safdar Hashmi, 35, a founder of the pro-Marxist Students Federation of India at Delhi University in 1970, was a playwright, actor, director and leading figure in Indian street theater. He was beaten to death by a street gang early this month after refusing to stop production of a street play. The play supported a candidate running against a member of the Congress Party. Mr. Hashmi was one of the most sought-after film and video narrators in India. He told an interviewer that he had earned enough at documentary work to ''spend 11 months doing anything that the party wants me to do.'' On perestroika and glasnost: The two things are quite separate. The Communist Party of India-Marxist has broadly supported perestroika. But glasnost and perestroika are two different cups of tea. We do not put them together. . . . The interpretation of the West is that the reforms and Gorbachev's admissions are an expression of failure. We can see from the breakneck speed of the changes that only a society that is in control of itself can do this sort of thing. . . .

BUT PERESTROIKA can be disturbing for us. Take Afghanistan. Someone gets up at a party Congress and says Afghanistan was a historical mistake. The whole revolution in Afghanistan was irreversibly damaged. The Afghans are no longer in a position to defend their revolution.

We have defend the presence there of Soviet troops. Now you have the Soviets saying they have no business to be there. So what happens to the class struggle? Do you abandon Nicaragua and Ethiopia too? What will happen to them? The class war is not over and will never be over - not as long imperialism is there.

Gorbachev's peace offensive has been successful because he has put the Americans on the defensive. I believe socialism will win in 10, 20, 30 years. It cannot fail. Capitalism is struggling with its contradictions: the pressures of an inflated economy, greater competition, low growth rates, huge debts. And it won't be long that the bubble bursts, like it did with the crash of the New York Stock Exchange. There will be more like those.